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The Future of Web 2.0
An interview with WSU's Gary Brown
2/27/2008
While ePortfolios are coming to the forefront as better than traditional tests for student documentation of learning, we know they are limited at this point because they still are institution-specific. Plus, as Trent Batson has noted [see "The ePortfolio Hijacked"], they tend to be implemented as institutional or program assessment management systems. In that vein, students typically are submitting their assignments over the course of the curriculum, just as they would submit their assignments in a physical drop box. A real student-centered model would put the authority, or ownership, of that ePortfolio in the hands of the students: They could share evidence of their learning for review with peers, and offer that evidence to instructors for grading and credentialing. But even then, if they try to do this with multiple institutions, they probably won't be able to meet all the different requirements of those various institutions, because they'll still be working with a single institutionally owned and supported ePortfolio, designed just for that institution.
So, can Web 2.0 help get us around the present limitations of ePortfolios? Web 2.0 provides an opportunity for students to mash up a variety of applications, the results of which they own themselves and can make available to anyone. To that end, we should start thinking not so much in terms of an ePortfolio but, instead, in terms of a personal learning environment (PLE).
And what we're trying to do here at WSU is bring outside employers into the process. Then we can have those employers validate that what we're doing aligns with what they find to be valuable. At the same time, we have the opportunity to demonstrate to employers who work with us the complexity of the work we do.
And what are some of the technologies that you're using now or might be using in the future with PLEs? Google Groups, Picasa, various types of social software; there are many examples. In general, it's all stuff that's out there in the world -- worldware -- and though nobody has said that these tools are designed specifically for the academy, there's no reason that, using these technologies, students can't share their work with their instructors.
Right now at WSU, one of the things we're developing in collaboration with Microsoft is a "harvesting" gradebook. So as an instructor in an environment like this, my gradebook for you as a student has links to all the different things that are required of you in order for me to credit you for completing the work in my class. But you may have worked up one of the assignments in Flickr, another in Google Groups, another in Picasa, and another in a wiki. Maybe you've also made some significant contributions to Wikipedia. So, I need a gradebook where I have the link you've provided me, rather than a copy of the work, and the gradebook should be capable of pulling in all of these various sources.
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